In 2005, dissatisfied with the official Mexican selections for the international art fair ARCOmadrid, Máximo González decided to combine the ancient practice of street vending, which dates to pre-Columbian times, with contemporary art.

The Argentinian transplant to Mexico City had long been fascinated with the changarrito, or street vending cart, so he designed his own, loaded it with works by more than 60 emerging artists and set up shop at the Spanish art fair, offering an alternative vision of the Mexican art scene.

"I opened the invitation to everyone not invited to ARCO," González said recently during his first visit to San Antonio. "We sold small pieces, with 100 percent of the money going to the artists."

Artpace has brought that alternative vision, now thriving as the Proyecto Changarrito, or Changarrito Project, co-founded with artist Ivan Buenader,Ö to San Antonio.

Rather than setting up on the sidewalk outside the Main Street art space, as is the usual Changarrito practice, "Transitios" can be seen in Artpace's upstairs Hudson (Show)Room through April 21.

Organized by Artpace's Mary Heathcott with independent curator Leslie Moody Castro, the exhibition features quick-witted visual puzzles and thoughtfully constructed objects in a variety of media, from sculpture to photography, by four Mexico City artists — González, Ricardo Cuevas, Miguel Monroy and Jose Antonio Vega Macotela — as well as 38 works by more than a dozen other Changarrito artists. There isn't a dead body or a river in sight.

"The show doesn't center around the typical things you usually see in Mexican art," said Moody Castro. "We wanted to look outside the themes of drug trafficking and immigration, for instance, and broaden the conversation to what else is happening in Mexico today."

Cuevas explores the potential for misunderstanding in the four-part "Change Is Possible," for which he asked four Mexican print shops to transpose the spoken phrase, getting some interesting extrapolations in type and bringing new meaning to the term "lost in translation."

Vega Macotela gained access to Mexican prisons to deal with human commerce in a video work titled "44/Time Exchange" of a man playing handball. Across from the projection is a "drawing" of ball scuff marks on paper, physical evidence of the completed transaction (which involved medical care for the prisoner).

Monroy's "Debt Generation 2/3" comprises framed credit card statements of bills paid with other credit cards, as well as the receipt for the frames themselves.

"People think the Mexican economy is based on oil or manufacturing," he said, "but the Mexican economy is based on debt."

From a distance, the large, rectangular work, 12 feet by 6 feet, resembles a crumpled quilt hung on the wall. Closer up, it dawns on the viewer that the artist has taken Mexican currency — actually, waste strips from the edges of uncut sheets of pesos (how he gained access to the Mexican mint is puro Mexicano) — and woven on a handmade loom what might be considered a large security blanket in blue (20 pesos notes), red (50 pesos notes) and green (100 pesos notes).

The "money pieces" are only one aspect of González's work; his "chair-trees," also shown here, with one leg of a simple dining chair replaced with a rough branch, speak to man's relationship with the natural environment.

And his Changarrito Project, which has expanded into the United States and now encompasses curated exhibitions such as like "Transitios," poetry and publishing, nevertheless remains devoted to artistic diversity and "informal commerce" — those "microcosmic moments of exchange" that occur millions of times daily in a megalopolis like Mexico City.